Humanity has made enormous progress in the past 50 years toward eliminating hunger and malnutrition. Some five billion people--more than 80 percent of the world's population--have enough food to live healthy, productive lives. Agricultural development has contributed significantly to these gains, while also fostering economic growth and poverty reduction in some of the world's poorest countries.

This new report by WFP details impact of climate change on hunger in developing countries. Predicts that by 2050 the number of people at risk of hunger as a result of climate change is expected to increase by 10 to 20 percent more than would be expected without climate change.

This UNDP-WHO joint report draws attention to the global energy access situation and highlights that three billion people still rely on traditional biomass and coal, with a striking two million deaths per year associated with indoor burning of these solid fuels in unventilated kitchens.<br>
Almost two billion people need modern energy services by 2015 to accelerate MDGs achievement.

The African elephant's misfortune has been its teeth, in particular the well developed pair of upper incisors known as tusks for which it is being killed in large numbers. The visible ivory part of the tusks is made up of dentine with an outer layer of enamel, and when viewed in cross section it reveals criss-cross lines that form a series of diamond shapes. This is what gives the elephant ivory its distinctive lustre, and makes it so valuable economically.

The effects of climate change could lead to as much as a 5% drop in the GDP of countries in South Asia and Africa, including India, a World Bank report warned on Sunday. The report said the effects of a 2-degree Celsius rise in temperature due to global warming could put up to 400 million people at risk of hunger and leave up to 2 billion lacking enough water resources.

For more than 40 years, Earth has been sending out distress signals. We have responded through staging processions on Earth days, holding seminars, passing environmental laws and forging a few international treaties, like in the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero.

In West Africa two rice species (Oryza glaberrima Steud. and Oryza sativa L.) co-exist. Although originally it was thought that interspecific hybridization is impossible without biotechnological methods, progenies of hybridization appear to occur in farmer fields.

VIEW FINDER NOT A USUAL EXERCISE Soldiers smell the ground to detect bodies of flash flood victims in Taiwan after Typhoon Morakot battered the island"s southern region in the second week of August. The typhoon, which Met officials call the deadliest in 50 years, also triggered mudslides; one such mudslide